


Castling

by threewick



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: But maybe not an especially sexy kind, Finger Sucking, M/M, Murder, Ripped off?, Trauma, heavily inspired, james bond inspired, who knows.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 11:16:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13973940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewick/pseuds/threewick
Summary: Eggsy kills a man with his (nearly) bare hands, and Harry has to pick up the pieces.





	Castling

**Author's Note:**

> This is heavily influenced by a scene from one of my fave movies, Casino Royale, with a special mention of the garrote thanks to one of my fave TV shows, PB. It's nonsense and there's no sex so you might want to turn back now if that's why you came.

Eggsy Unwin had gotten top marks on the firearms testing during training.

Merlin had smiled at him - not with his mouth, of course, but with his eyes, or maybe just the corners of them - and commended him, said that he handled his pistol like ‘another limb.’

Eggsy Unwin, who so very loved praise, had preened at this.  _ Like _ another limb. And that word was important, Eggsy realized much later - it had only been  _ like _ another limb. Because that’s all a gun was, that’s the closest it could get to being a part of you.  _ As if _ it were a part of you, but always distinctly removed. Separate. Impersonal.

He remembered his first kill primarily because it had shocked him how unmemorable it was. He had gotten the guy directly between the eyes, a sudden drill of red where there had previously only been forehead, and the guy had collapsed. 

Eggsy had expected to feel  _ changed _ , somehow - he supposed he had killed Arthur, but really the prick had had no one to blame but himself, and maybe he’d killed Charlie, but he had the niggling feeling Charlie was too expensive and wealthy to die.

The shot, though, had clearly been an Eggsy kill, a murder, a bullet fired by his trigger finger that bashed through bone and burrowed through brain and bellowed out through skull again with an echoing blast that made his ears ring.

Except he hadn’t felt anything at all. Instead he had whirled around, slamming the butt of his pistol into a different man’s temple, feeling bone splinter beneath his brute strength before using the body as a human shield.

But that had been with a gun.

He stared at his gun now, the mean glint of metal softened through the pane glass between them. It was out of reach and blurred by the water sluicing down the glass. He thought of its fatality, the single dart it spat out, the clean precision with which Eggsy aimed it. He never made anyone suffer; a clean shot.

Those high marks on firearm testing were half-pride and half-proof of Eggsy’s inability to divorce himself of his emotions. ‘You’re too soft,’ Roxie had chided him once, fondness and admonishment turning up the words. But it didn’t matter how soft he was - his body was a primed weapon, and he was a fucking ace shot. If he could be a good shot, he could be a neat killer. He could put bad guys to rest without undue suffering.

A clean shot.

The water continued pounding against the glass and the tile, hissing where it bled into Eggsy’s suit jacket. Merlin was going to kill him; he wasn’t meant to get his suit wet. It was strange armor and it would rust, or combust, or whatever it was that Merlin had threatened. But right now, Eggsy found it impossible to care.

He stared at his gun some more, blaming it, hating it, imploring it. If only he’d used the gun - if only he’d  _ had _ the gun.

Tracks ran down his cheeks. The salt of his anguish clung to his pores, making him feel sticky, like he was coated in blood. And he  _ was _ coated in blood - it was viscous, clinging to his hands, blooming pink across the tile where the water managed to lick it off. 

He was shaking his head at it - no, he was just shaking. He couldn’t stop. He remembered the feeling of flesh caving in beneath his force, of veins and arteries popping and splitting, the mist of hot blood and viscera blinding him. And he remembered the sound - mostly he remembered the sound. A dying thing, humanity torn out of it altogether, as the dying thing scrabbled and gurgled and gasped and sagged.

Eggsy was shaking his head again - no, he was shaking. He was gasping and shaking, and he was covered in gore, and he was a murderer.

The showerhead wept onto the tile.

***

“Eggsy?”

Harry knocked on the bathroom door, frowning slightly at the lack of response. Eggsy had never been one to luxuriate in a hotel bathroom, but he’d been in there a half hour gone, and Harry had to piss.

“Eggsy, my darling, if you’re having a wank that is perfectly fine, but some of us need to use the toilet.”

Harry paused, waiting for a response - something flippant like a cheery ‘fuck off,’ or a wordless grunt that confirmed that yes, Eggsy was, indeed, having a wank.

But all Harry heard was silence - silence interrupted by the spill of shower water onto tile, and his frown deepened.

“Right, I’m coming in,” he said crisply, not waiting this time before pushing into the bathroom.

What he saw made his heart feather out, thin and off-guard, all breath pushed out of his chest.

“Oh, Eggsy.”

***

It had been an ambush, and they hadn’t been prepared.

It hadn’t mattered in the end - what were a few thugs when matched with a pair of Kingsman agents? But it had been unpleasant nonetheless, with much scuffling and muffled swearing and shoving of corpses into laundry chutes. Harry  _ did _ feel guilty about that part - the hotel maintenance staff was owed an apology, but he could hardly break cover to give them one. 

He had been proud of the way Eggsy had handled himself given how quickly and efficiently he’d been disarmed. One of the men had knocked Eggsy’s gun out of his hand straightaway, leaving Eggsy with only his fists and his wits. There had been a nasty bit with a garrote that Harry had seen out of the corner of his eye, but Eggsy had made it out of it relatively unscathed.

_ Gymnastics _ , Harry had thought at the time in a smear of pride and adrenaline.  _ He’s so bloody flexible _ .

But of course, Harry, decades into this business and jaded beyond redemption, had forgotten how it felt to kill a man with your bare hands. Your bare hands, and a garrote.

*** 

“Eggsy - Eggsy, it’s over,” Harry said, stopping at the edge of the glass-encased shower. The shower was grotesque like this, its four transparent walls making it a display case of suffering, Eggsy slumped into its center like a broken doll.

He was still fully dressed, all of his expensive Kingsman gear sodden, but Harry knew without doubt that Merlin would not be angry. Not when Eggsy was blood-smeared and shaking.

Eggsy's entire body shivered violently beneath the spray of the shower, his eyes fixed far away, unseeing. His back was pressed against the opposite wall - Harry realized with a start that while the water was soaking him through, his hair was dry. His head was out of the spray, which meant his cheeks were wet with something other than water.

“Oh, Eggsy,” Harry breathed again, his own throat feeling tight.

He climbed in.

The water hit him like needles and Harry realized viscerally why Eggsy was shivering - it was frigid. He was quick to twist the knob until it warmed; Eggsy made no acknowledgement, silent tears still ruining his cheeks. Harry sat beside him.

“Eggsy,” he tried again, but Eggsy just stared away, looking out at something Harry could not see, looking very nearly like a dead thing. “Eggsy, please-”

He reached out to touch Eggsy, tentative and hesitant, pressing his fingertips into the bend of Eggsy’s elbow. Eggsy’s only response was to flex his fingers; Harry saw with a start that they were still stained with blood.

Harry acted without thought. He gently lifted one of Eggsy’s hands free and brought it to his mouth, placing Eggsy’s thumb first into his mouth and sucking. He tasted the metallic bite of blood, cooled by time and temperature, and sucked until he thought it might be done. He withdrew it; Eggsy’s thumb was his own again. Harry spat pink onto the floor of the shower.

He did it again with Eggsy’s index finger, sucking and spitting, the shower still raining down impassively upon them, drenching Harry’s dress shirt and trousers. Eggsy made no acknowledgment, not until Harry put his middle finger against his tongue. He sucked again and Eggsy seemed to sag with it, his chin falling onto his chest as a great, heaving sob wracked his body.

“Oh, Eggsy,” Harry murmured again, the repetition making the words a prayer. The blood he’d just spit onto the shower tile curdled and swept into the drain. He did his ring finger, and his pinky. Eggsy heaved another sob. Harry took his other hand. 

The water spilled down on them like something absolving and holy, baptizing Eggsy with this new, unignorable truth. Harry wished he could undo it; Harry wished he could take it for himself. He knew that he was a demon disguised as a hero - he knew that he was a killer. Eggsy was no such thing. Eggsy was gold-dusted and good, and Harry was surer of it with each shuddering exhale, each miserable sob.

He did his thumb, and his index finger, his middle and ring fingers as one, and his pinky very last. Each of Eggsy’s fingers captured briefly by Harry’s mouth, his tongue the absolution, his lips the confessional.

“Oh, Eggsy,” he said in murmurs, until he’d sucked and spat and snapped every string, until Eggsy was sagged and sodden on the tile floor and crying openly in a way that was at once childlike and far too worldly.

“His neck -” Eggsy managed, the words tossed and garbled through the spray. “His throat - I  _ felt _ it.”

Harry did not need him to elaborate. He knew all too well the sick, squelching wrongness of slicing a throat, especially with wire, especially by force. A blade was cruel and neat; a garrote… It was brutish and gleeful and hideous. 

“It’s over,” Harry told him firmly, picking up the sodden boy in parts and bringing Eggsy onto his lap. Eggsy did not resist - he was lost to everything but his own ichorous thoughts, trapped by horror at the capabilities of his own hands.

“That man is dead, Eggsy - he brought that weapon, you did not. You are not that weapon. You are  _ not _ that weapon.”

Eggsy cried harder, pouring himself out across the tile, chasing the blood of the murdered man with his own anguish. He was changed, Harry knew. He was changed and that merry, flippant boy was not gone, but he was no longer the only Eggsy - there was a hardness that came from killing with your own hands, and Harry hated that Eggsy now knew it.

“Eggsy, oh Eggsy, oh Eggsy,” Harry murmured, clutching Eggsy to him, rocking them together, the water still sputtering over their rumpled forms. Eggsy’s face was pressed into Harry’s side; his hands were curled up in front of it, though whether protective or damning Harry did not know. But he would not make Eggsy endure this changing alone.

Time passed. It was impossible to measure in this windowless bathroom with its artificial lighting. The water stayed warm - it might have been hours, it might have been the entirety of the night. Harry’s back was stiff and his legs were protesting. The waterfall continued to splash over them, into them, around them.

“Oh, Eggsy,” Harry sighed again, mournful as a dove, and Eggsy went limp in his arms.

Eggsy clutched Harry’s shirt, limpet-like, a child clinging to its comfort.

They sat like that a little bit longer. When Eggsy finally reached up and turned off the shower, his eyes were the slate-blue after a rainstorm, and when he looked at Harry, he looked tired.

“Thank you,” was all he said, the words croaked and tight.

“I love you,” Harry responded.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at threewickfic <3


End file.
